Eternal
by Scribe Shiloh
Summary: [X history within TRC, oneshot] A take on TRC Seishirou and Subaru's meeting. Some things are eternal and carry between lives as well as worlds.


The night that his search ended, the moon glowed silver down onto the city rooftops, and it was quiet, as quiet as a city could be. They never really changed from world to world, the cities and the people who built them. Wherever humanity existed, there seemed to retain a fundamental agreement over their existance, unchanging and solid. The only deviants were the ones who noticed, and even they usually chose to turn their eyes away.

Seishirou wondered if he should take comfort in that solidity, or be afraid for things that would never, ever change, things that he could never escape no matter how far he ran.

Like this.

He supposed, in the end, that it didn't matter. Not anymore.

Subaru lifted his lips from the hunter's throat, eyes closed and blood trickling down his chin. The moonlight spilled over his hair, lining it with silver, and caught his pale skin from the shadow. His eyes were hidden by soft, thin lids, but Seishirou could still see the bright green in his memory, lancing into him as the distance between them had vanished. There had never been much distance between them anyway.

"Subaru...kun..."

The vampire opened his eyes and gazed down.

Subaru was older than Seishirou had expected. He'd thought, since Hokuto was with him, that the twins would be sixteen again. But Subaru appeared to be twenty-five, and his eyes bore holes of lonliness in them as they watched him.

_ Are you fated to be sad forever, Subaru-kun? _

"You know, hunter," Subaru spoke at last, gaze unreadable, "that there is no such thing as eternal life."

Seishirou's eyes slid shut, and he smiled. A huff of air slid past his lips as blood slid through the delicate puncture wounds on his throat.

"I know."

Silence for a moment, and the moon waxed, watching them silently from above.

"Then why?"

Seishirou opened his eyes again. The blood on Subaru's lips was exotically beautiful. He admired the sight for a moment before looking back into his eyes. "Eternal life...can mean many things...Subaru-kun."

It didn't have to be of the body. But it didn't matter anyway—Subaru hadn't given it to him. He should have known that he wouldn't.

"You're dying," the vampire stated flatly.

"Mmm."

The unspoken question followed: _why don't you care? _ Seishirou gave it no answer. The answer wouldn't mean a thing to Subaru anyway.

Subaru's eyes narrowed. Seishirou thought at once how beautiful and sad that expression was. Even now, he would never be able to see his Subaru-kun smile again. Even born again into new lives, they would never change. Even sacrificing his eye—the same eye—for the sake of his search, in the end it was the same all over again.

Some things really were eternal.

Just not like anyone wanted them to be.

Seishirou's eyes slid shut again, prepared to let himself slip away. He could feel it, the darkness growing from his feet, the cold beneath the silver of the moonlight on his worn robes.

Maybe his next life would bring him another chance. But he doubted it. He'd failed this time, and all that awaited him was emptiness. For the first time since his rebirth, he felt a longing he'd come to label as sadness.

"Is it because... '_to die by the hand of the one you love is beautiful_'?" Subaru quoted.

Seishirou's eyes snapped open. Subaru's image flickered in and out of focus, but he forced his good eye to work. This was...this was...

The vampire smiled, the blood on his lips suddenly, terribly out of place. Or maybe it was just too stark of a reminder of what they were, and what they had become.

"You...you remember..." Seishirou whispered.

"Foolish hunter," Subaru told him softly. "Did you really believe that I would let you go again?"

"Su—"

"Shh." Subaru placed a finger on the surprised hunter's lips, and bent his head lower. Seishirou watched silently as he bit down on something inside his mouth—his tongue most likely—and dipped his head to capture Seishirou's mouth with his own. Bitter saltiness trickled past his lips, and Seishirou's eyes widened.

He knew this feeling—he could remember dying before. A cold spreading through his body, a numbness that pressed insistently and silently between his consciousness and his soul, tenderly ripping the latter away, and everything— _everything _—halting from turmoil into a chill peace.

This wasn't quite the same, and in an instant he knew what had happened.

From a killer to a hunter who killed to a killer again. Some things really were eternal. He wondered if Subaru killed with kindness, or if he had changed in the aftermath of Seishirou's death. Had he learned not to feel? Had he learned to slip a hand carelessly and tenderly into someone's heart, to snap a neck with the finesse of plucking a fine flower and walk away after crushing the petal of a soul into the dirt?

No, somehow Seishirou didn't think so. Because if he had, Subaru wouldn't have just granted his wish.

"This is the only 'eternal life' I can give you, Seishirou-san," Subaru told him once he'd pulled away. "You're sure it's what you wanted?"

Seishirou was still aclimating to the changes in his body, the sensation of being lightweight and cold. He felt as though the warmth had been ripped from his soul and settled into ice water, burning him from the inside. It wasn't a sensation that he was terribly unused to, this was just stronger, more tangible. But it didn't hurt as much as he'd thought it would. Maybe that was Subaru's doing.

He gazed up at Subaru, and he remembered back to a world far away and perhaps even long gone, and he knew that nothing between them could ever be truly healed. Those holes in Subaru's eyes—he'd been born with them in this world. Some wounds reach deep into the soul, and no matter how many times that soul is reborn, the emptiness lingers even if the memory does not.

"Yes," Seishirou replied. _There is no reversing this now. This, too, is eternal.  
_

"Good."

Again, the silence between them spoke the words neither of them could voice: ' _because you are never leaving me again. '_

The moon watched them, craning its invisible neck across the dark sky, its light hiding the stars from view.

The fingers on his shoulders pressed down, and Seishirou realized with mild surprise that Subaru was shaking. Not much—just a small tremour in the arms and the tip of the chin. His gaze flickered to green eyes, and he could almost see the desperation at the bottom of those holes, clawing its way up to the surface.

"Subaru-kun?"

The silence stood between them for a moment longer before the other spoke. When he did, the words were harsh and low.

" Do you have any idea how much it _hurt_? I couldn't even hate you for dying, and I couldn't even die because of...your eye. /Kamui/ gave me your eye to replace mine."

Seishirou blinked, surprised yet again. So...the Kamui of Earth had fullfilled his Wish, after all. Or tried to, at least. His Wish hadn't been to replace Subaru's eye, not in so few words. Yes, he was a possessive bastard and hated the idea of anyone but _himself _ touching _his _ Subaru-kun, and yes, he had wanted to erase that scar from the Sumeragi. But more than anything else, he'd really wanted Subaru to be _his_. There was no better way to ensure his possession by turning Subaru into himself, and his eye...

"I felt like a machine," Subaru grated, his fanged canines flashing in the moonlight with the quiet fierceness of his words, "keeping you alive. The last part of you—your living eye inside my head. You were always there and yet _never with me_."

Seishirou said nothing. He merely gazed, entranced, at the figure he had made Subaru into. He wanted to reach out and caress the raw emotion spilling from those eyes. The holes were being filled up with it.

"I thought...I thought I would forget once I died at last. But I didn't. And when I remembered, I thought that having Hokuto-chan back with me would be enough. But it wasn't." Seishirou glimpsed a pearl of guilt in Subaru's eyes, flashing only for a moment.

His Subaru-kun hadn't changed much, either. Still eternal.

"I knew if death couldn't erase you, then nothing could, and in the moment I realized that I almost hated you. And then...you...you...I almost didn't recognize you at first. You look...you look like you did that first day, beneath the sakura tree. And...and...and when you said you'd come through worlds, I _knew_, I _knew _ it was _you _ and not some other you." Subaru's eyes were dark and raw and desperately beautiful, just as the soul Seishirou saw pouring out of them. "Forgive me, Seishirou-san, but from that moment, I was never going to let you leave even if you wanted to."

Seishirou blinked. Why was Subaru appologizing? He had done nothing that merited asking for forgiveness.

Too kind. Even when all else was shattered, Subaru possessed eternal kindness.

"This is what I wanted, Subaru-kun," Seishirou stated factually. "Even if you hadn't wanted to see me, I would have hunted you anyway."

Subaru gazed down at him, clearly taken slightly aback for a moment, until he remembered yet again. Seishirou could see the memory in his eyes, feel the dawning of gentle understanding.

/_Is what people say before they die the truth? I'll never know, because I can never ask._/

Subaru could ask now. But he didn't need to anymore.

Seishirou had been telling the truth after all.

The scars would never heal between them, never completely. But they had both gone beyond the point where it ceased to matter.

Seishirou pulled Subaru gently down to him, curling his arms around the light form. They closed their eyes, and the moon watched their eternities in silence.

All that mattered was that neither of them would ever be alone again.


End file.
